NARRATOR: On December 4, 1992 President George Bush announced he was sending up to 28,000 US troops to Somalia to help provide humanitarian relief in a strife-torn country where hundreds of thousands of people had died of starvation. Not quite a year later, shortly after a failed raid that took the lives of 18 American servicemen, President Bill Clinton announced an exit strategy for the United States.

In less than a year, the United States went from welcomed savior to embattled occupier. How did this happen? What went wrong? How did a mission of mercy that won almost universal acclaim for its humanitarian intentions turn into another armed intervention in a developing country?

Today "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" examines what went right and wrong in The U.S. and U.N. in Somalia.

Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

Just a few years ago, many Americans had never heard of Somalia and fewer still knew where it was on the map. But we were bombarded by pictures of starving and dying Somalis and in a humanitarian gesture we Americans sent a combat unit of 25,600 men and women to Somalia to save the Somalis from themselves. We went in to feed the Somalis and bring order out of chaos.

We've learned a lot from that operation. It did not go exactly as planned and our program is on that subject today.

NARRATOR: Somalia is a nation of recent origin. Located on the Horn of Africa, it only became a nation in 1960 after the merger of former British and Italian colonies. But it has long been an area of strife and conflict, dominated by foreign powers for over 100 years.

British, French, and Italian imperialism all played a role in the region in the 19th and 20th centuries. The British established a protectorate in the northern regions in 1886. Italy established a colony in the southern regions shortly thereafter. During World War II the British captured the Italian colony. But in 1950 it became a UN Trust Territory and Italy returned as the administering power for ten years.

In 1991 Somalia had a population of about 7.2 million and an area about the size of Texas.

Here's a brief history. In 1970 dictator Siad Barre came to power. He was to rule for the next 21 years through brutal oppression and by pitting different clans against each other. Somalia and the Soviet Union began a close relationship in 1966. This lasted until 1976. During that time the Soviets supplied about $600 million worth of arms and military equipment to Somalia. After the Soviet Union pulled out in 1977, the United States became Barre's primary benefactor.

According to a recent analysis by the Congressional Research Service, the United States delivered to Somalia about $154 million worth of weapons and military equipment from 1981 through 1991.

Siad Barre was driven from power in January 1991 by the United Somali Congress, an insurgent movement formed largely of members of the Hawieyah clan. This created a power vacuum and began the descent into anarchy for Somalia. One faction of the United Somali Congress, headed by Ali Mahdi Mohammed, claimed it controlled the government. Another faction, headed by Mohammed Farah Aideed, disputed this. Civil war ensued.

Contrary to many press reports, Aideed is widely regarded in Somalia as a patriot, scholar and military genius who was the deciding force in the overthrow of former dictator Siad Barre.

It was this war, coupled with bad harvests, which led to the horrifying scenes of starvation that were televised around the world in 1992. By the end of 1992 about 350,000 Somalis had died. Another 1.5 million, close to one-fourth of the remaining population, were thought to be in danger of starvation without massive food aid.

DAVID EVANS: Here was a society that had literally collapsed, the bottom had dropped out. It was like a -- the kind of a society you would expect in a post-nuclear war environment. It just happened in slow motion over the period of that two-year civil war triggered by the overthrow of Siad Barre.

NARRATOR: David Evans is an expert on military affairs and a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. He covered Operation Restore Hope as a reporter for The Chicago Tribune.

Although various international relief groups tried delivering food and other humanitarian aid, their efforts were thwarted by continued fighting among the clans, many of which used food as a weapon by stealing, hoarding, and denying it to the people.

Pressure was building for someone to do something. The UN tried sending in 500 ill-equipped and ill-trained UN peace-keepers in accordance with a previously passed Security Council resolution. The UN could not get agreement from clan leaders to stop fighting. And when some peacekeepers did arrive in Mogadishu, they were forced to stay in their quarters due to the civil war.

It was this continued fighting and starvation which led to Operation Restore Hope, the intervention commanded and controlled by the United States that lasted from December 1992 through May 1993. The limited objectives announced for the operation were to "open supply routes, get food moving, prepare the way for a UN peacekeeping force."

Still there is more than one view as to why exactly the United States went in. David Evans thinks more than mere humani- tarianism might have been involved.

Mr. EVANS: There's also speculation that Somalia could be rich in natural gas and oil. So, if we're looking at the eventual depletion of our proven oil reserves, Somalia could take on immense importance.

Indeed, when I got back from my own trip to Somalia, I called the American Petroleum Institute and, sure enough, there had been very recent surveys, as recent as 1990, and there have been substantial finds of natural gas in the offshore fields. Clearly, when you have these kinds of findings of natural gas, there is a high probability that oil also is to be found in Somalia.

NARRATOR: Others believe the United States had an obligation to help in Somalia.

RANDALL ROBINSON: In addition, I thought the US had some-thing for which to -- to atone.

NARRATOR: Randall Robinson is the distinguished executive director of TransAfrica, an influential foreign policy lobby for Africa and the Caribbean based in Washington.

Mr. ROBINSON: Then we, of course, had the colonial period with the British and the Italians. And, following that, nine years of democracy in Somalia, which was overthrown by Siad Barre and -- who saw that we were giving support at the time to Haile Selassie in Ethiopia, their archenemy, and he applied for support from the Soviet Union. And then the arming of Somalia began when Haile Selassie was overthrown and replaced by a leftist, Mengistu, in Ethiopia.

NARRATOR: After Somalia invaded the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, Mengistu found a new patron in the Soviet Union. The United States switched sides and took over as an arms supplier to Somalia.

Mr. ROBINSON: We adopted Siad Barre and the Carter admin-istration, from 1977 to 1989, supplied Siad Barre with $887 million in US foreign assistance, including $200 million in arms. And so, what had been a peaceful, pastoral society became an armed camp.

Mr. EVANS: This was a country already awash in automatic weapons. I mean, there is an arms bazaar. You go to downtown Mogadishu in what passes for a shopping center there and you can buy virtually any weapon made in the world.

NARRATOR: Others thought it was by 1992 simply a case of doing the right thing.

Senator JOHN McCAIN: Clearly, we had a mission in 1992 that the American people strongly supported, and that was to keep a million people or more from starving to death.

NARRATOR: John McCain is a Republican senator from Arizona. He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War and a leading member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator McCAIN: Perhaps it was not in the United States' vital national security interests, but certainly as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles we felt that it was the right thing to do.

NARRATOR: David Evans thinks there was also an element of self-justification at work, as well.

Mr. EVANS: I think you're really looking at a military in search of alternative missions -- the drug interdiction, the humanitarian, the disaster relief -- the range of jobs by which they could show how useful they can be in the post-cold war era.

NARRATOR: By most accounts, the US intervention, Operation Restore Hope, was a success. Fighting in the capital city of Mogadishu was reduced. Food deliveries were made in the country-side and starvation was greatly reduced. American troop strength peaked at 25,600.

The operation was not without costs. Eight Americans were killed during Operation Restore Hope. The financial cost was also high. According to the Pentagon, the cost of its operations in Somalia through 1993 was about $760 million. Initial estimates are that the subsequent UN operation, in which the United States participates, could total over a billion and a half dollars. The US share of that UN cost would be $480 million. All together, over $1 billion in US costs.

The United States also made some almost disastrous mistakes in efforts to bridge the cultural gap that existed when it first intervened in Somalia. David Evans explains the problem with a leaflet distributed by US military forces as part of a psychological campaign to convince Somalis of the good intentions of US military forces.

Mr. EVANS: If you look at the back, there are a number of physical spelling errors in the text. And the first word here, "adunka," literally translated means "slave." It should have been spelled "avonka" for "United Nations." So, you have the first two words, instead of reading "United Nations," reads "slave nations."

NARRATOR: Randall Robinson believes the United States missed an important opportunity to bring about peace during Operation Restore Hope.

Mr. ROBINSON: I think it was quite right to go in with the Restore Hope Operation. At the same time -- I said at the time that, unless we got the weapons out of Somalia with some kind of disarmament initiative, we would be back in the same stew once this crisis, the famine part of this had been dealt with and we would see starvation again in the country. There was no appetite for disarmament on Capitol Hill or in the White House at the time and it was never done.

NARRATOR: Others believe disarmament was never a viable option.

Mr. EVANS: You cannot disarm this country by force, for example. If you're talking about search and clear operations, where you cordon of entire blocks of Mogadishu and sweep through, you're not going to get all the arms that are buried in people's backyards, that are buried out in the country.

NARRATOR: On May 4, 1993 Operation Restore Hope ended. It was succeeded by UNISOM II, the multilateral UN operation. Approximately 25,000 troops from about 30 nations, including Bangladesh, India, Italy and Pakistan, deployed in place of the United States.

By that point most US troops had returned home. The US presence was reduced to about 4,500 troops providing logistics support to United Nations personnel, plus a separate Quick Reaction Force that remained under US command, and the Rangers, also under US command, who tried to hunt down Aideed.

It was after the removal of most US forces that problems began to pile up. One was what is called "mission creep," the addition of more, not clearly defined goals. Senator McCain explains.

Senator McCAIN: That mission, as we all know, changed rather dramatically as the result of the United Nations Security Council resolutions from one of keeping people from starving to peacekeeping, warlord-hunting, nation-building, whatever.

NARRATOR: Another problem, according to Senator McCain, was the Clinton administration's failure to consult with Congress.

Senator McCAIN: One of them is not coming back to consult with Congress because of the change of mission, but, more impor-tantly, without really thinking through what the consequences of a very dramatically shifted priorities entailed and the possible consequences.

NARRATOR: Perhaps the biggest failure was that the United States lost its reputation of impartiality and began to be seen as a foreign power taking sides in Somalia's civil war.

Mr. ROBINSON: No matter what one feels inside, you must always disguise that, because you can't do effective peacekeeping without that kind of impartiality. We didn't. We had, early on, indicated that we favored some and didn't favor others. And, of course, Mr. Aideed was one of those that we indicated hostility towards very early, and that was a major mistake before the June killing of the Pakistanis.

NARRATOR: David Evans sees a similarity to 1983, when US soldiers participated in a multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut, Lebanon.

Mr. EVANS: There are certain chilling parallels to Beirut, where the United States, at one fateful juncture, called in naval gunfire against one faction and that polarized the situation for the US forces in Lebanon from that moment on. And that's what led to those stark scenes of the Marines at the airport in Beirut, bunkered-in, taking shellfire and sniper fire on a daily, nay hourly basis.

NARRATOR: Unfortunately, the administration did not seem to remember that experience.

Mr. EVANS: The same seems to be holding in Mogadishu in the southern part of Somalia. That once we were perceived as taking sides against one or the other factions, we became part of the problem, not part of the solution.

NARRATOR: Randall Robinson points to an incident that he believes led to an attack on Pakistani peacekeepers in June 1993, an event which caused the UN to put a bounty on Farah Aideed's head and the subsequent deployment of US Rangers and members of the Delta Force to try to capture him.

Mr. ROBINSON: The notice that went out a day or two before that occurred went to mid-level people in Mr. Aideed's forces, indicating that his weapons depot would be inspected the next day. There was no such notice sent to any of the other militia leaders.

NARRATOR: It's easy to see how Aideed might feel singled out.

Mr. ROBINSON: And so, he might clearly have had the impres-sion that there was going to be a unilateral disarmament of his forces and not as a part of a comprehensive program undertaken across the country with all of the militia leaders.

NARRATOR: Other difficulties included coordinating activities with the military forces of many nations. As this diagram illustrates, the command and control structure of the UN operation is extremely complex.

In addition, according to David Evans, the profes- sionalism of the various military forces was uneven.

Mr. EVANS: I had this misgiving when I was there that the United Nations personnel did not have the same energy level as our military officers running this operation, that they did not have the same sense of urgency. There was a certain odor of incompetence and laissez faire that I thought did not bode well for a strong, coherent, well-led operation after the operation was turned over.

NARRATOR: Others doubt whether putting military forces in Somalia was ever a good idea to begin with.

Senator McCAIN: The United States has no viable military options in Somalia that I know of besides a massive military involvement which would involve the consequent slaughter of innocent civilians. We were treated to the bizarre situation where, because Mr. Aideed's people were using women and children as human shields and we were killing women and children, the UN military spokesperson said that now women and children are combatants. We went there to feed them and we ended up killing them.

NARRATOR: David Evans believes the tilt against Aideed predates the killing of the Pakistanis.

Mr. EVANS: There certainly seems to have been a distancing of the senior UN officials from Aideed, a refusal to talk to him and so forth.

NARRATOR: Randall Robinson believes that UN military personnel have also been at fault.

Mr. ROBINSON: You've got now Canadians on trial for murder because Canadians had in their forces there a white supremacist cell that murdered several people point blank range in Somalia. The Belgians, the same thing. Evidence of UN forces throwing Somali civilians off bridges.

NARRATOR: Mr. Robinson believes these charges should be investigated.

Mr. ROBINSON: Well, the Somalis have said, and with justi-fication, that if Aideed has to account for the June situation with the Pakistanis, as well he should, then there ought to be an investigation of the UN peacekeeping forces, too, that have apparently committed a number of human rights abuses in Somalia.

NARRATOR: Canadian military court martial proceedings are now investigating these allegations.

In the aftermath of the attack on the Pakistani peace-keepers, the UN policy could be summed up in two words: "get Aideed."

Mr. EVANS: When the jury is in, this whole business of posting wanted posters and reward bonuses and things like that for Aideed will go down as a big mistake.

NARRATOR: It was pursuit of Aideed which led to the disastrous US raid in Mogadishu on October 3, resulting in nearly 100 casualties, including 18 dead and 75 wounded Rangers and Delta Force personnel.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, fearing for the safety of our forces there, President Clinton sent more than 7000 additional troops to Somalia to "protect our forces and enable our forces to complete their mission." He also set an exit date of March 31, 1994 for US forces to leave Somalia. This raises a question of what will happen once US and UN forces leave.

Randall Robinson believes that the situation is better than many people think.

Mr. ROBINSON: Americans don't properly understand what has happened in Somalia. We're talking about a crisis in one neigh- borhood of Mogadishu. The rest of the country has been restored to some working order.

NARRATOR: But even he acknowledges that the prospects for peace after the pullout are questionable.

Mr. ROBINSON: That largely depends on whether the Somalis have been able to hammer out some basic structure for a truce and a lasting peace before that happens. If the pullout happens before that can be successfully accomplished, then I think we're looking down the road towards disaster.

NARRATOR: David Evans is less optimistic.

Mr. EVANS: Is Somalia savable as a country? You have basically two former colonies that have been sort of grafted together, British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. They do have and they are occupied by different clans. I am not entirely certain that "Humpty-Dumpty" can be put back together.

NARRATOR: According to David Evans, in terms of anarchy and turmoil developing in African countries, Somalia may be just the tip of the iceberg.

Mr. EVANS: I remember standing at the Mogadishu airport with Father Bill Joy of the Catholic Relief Service based right out of Baltimore here. And he said, "You know, David, Africa is just -- sub-Sahara Africa is just sort of slowly sliding towards the edge of the cliff. Somalia is just the first country to fall over."

NARRATOR: What lessons can be learned from our experience in Somalia? Senator McCain believes that the United States must be far more wary in using military forces.

Senator McCAIN: It's in our interest to see people being able to survive throughout the world. It's in our interest to see peace and order. But what we have to recognize is the United States cannot do those things and the United States has to be very careful when it gets involved militarily. Otherwise, we will not only not help the situation, but perhaps, over time, worsen the situation, with the consequent expenditure of American lives and treasure.

NARRATOR: He also asserts that major problems must be solved before US forces can work effectively with those of other UN member nations.

Senator McCAIN: We find that some troops that were dispatched there were -- there's clearly not clear lines of command and control between them. Obviously, in the case of the deaths of the Rangers, there was a real problem with planning and coordination that I think lies on the US side as well as our allies' side, but primarily rests on the -- responsibility rests on the United Nations.

NARRATOR: Randall Robinson believes the United States has no alternative to continue working with the UN.

Mr. EVANS: We've got to understand as a nation that we cannot police the world anymore and we've got to do it in concert with the United Nations. And while it may be flawed, it's the only opportunity, the only chance we have to address these kinds of problems.

NARRATOR: Easier said than done, says David Evans.

Mr. EVANS: If there's one central lesson that comes out of this whole venture, it's that it's easy to get in and very hard to get out. It's easy to fly C-130 transports and parachute food. It is much more difficult to repair, rebuild, and rejuvenate a fractured culture, a fractured political system.

NARRATOR: It may be that while the end of the cold war gives the United States and the United Nations more freedom to deal with conflicts around the world, the costs and risks are increasing.

Senator McCAIN: To intervene militarily in civil wars is certainly not only a non-productive enterprise, but one which is fraught with danger. And we have to understand that there are certain areas of the world that are not on our vital national security interests that, unfortunately, we can do very little about.

NARRATOR: If a diplomatic solution is not achieved, then the whole effort in Somalia may have been nothing more than a temporary quick fix.

The lessons of the US and the UN interventions in Somalia are being closely studied. Their impact is felt around the world. The new world order which was on everyone's lips just a few years ago is, in the minds of many, a new world disorder.

There are numerous ethnic conflicts and civil wars around the world, many of them producing shocking levels of death and destruction. Yet not all of them can be fixed by outside intervention. Solutions to many of them are beyond the capabili-ties of either the United Nations or the United States.

Intervening in such conflicts will mean great dangers, bering great costs, possibly for an indefinite period and for benefits which are not always clear. Whether the United States continues to go it alone with its own forces or supports the United Nations will depend in large part on which path its citizens decide to follow.

Admiral LaROCQUE: The situation in Somalia, I think, has definitely improved, although it did not turn out exactly as all of us had hoped. Since there will be many opportunities for us to become involved in other similar situations in other countries around the world, perhaps we ought to look carefully at the Somali situation to learn what lessons we can for the future. Americans are going to be called upon again to do a similar action and we ought not to be debating just what role we want to play in other countries.

Until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque.